The Michter’s Single Barrel Straight Rye Whiskey, Barrel 4A-R2

Tasting notes:
If the Michter’s Single Barrel Straight Rye 4A-R2 were on the planet Tatooine, there would be no Jedi mind tricks keeping me from finding it.  For this, in short, is the droid we’re looking for.  There’s a deep, toffee-taffy effervescence on the nose.  Imagine windswept rye grasses square dancing on a bourbon barrel floor.  We get those delicious, buttery oak notes.  But the staves are hewn from trees that wanted nothing more than to be flowers.

The mouth is spicy and tough, like denim jeans with knee patches sewn in on the inside.  There is great texture but the flavor is a little quick.  What I mean to say is, the kinetic sensations on the tongue spark wildly, but this is toward the juice end of the spectrum, and not the syrup end.  We then consider whether it’s more a case of pulpless fiction or pulp nonfiction.  But when the debate reaches an impasse, we turn to the finish.

Here we find pleasing heat and more of the pyrotechnics that captured our interest in the mouth.  This finish hangs around for a long, long while, like a climb on a hors catégorie stage of the Tour de France.  We have brightness.  We take in lingering vegetal notes.  Because the tactile excitement almost overrides the flavors, we are left with only one solution: quickly record a message to Obi-Wan while Stormtroopers board our, um, I mean, pour another glasses and sit back for another fireworks show.

 
 
Rating:

The Michter’s Single Barrel Straight Rye (Barrel 4A-R2) is R2-KT–Perhaps better known as the pink R2, it appeared briefly in The Force Awakens.  It was originally built by an R2 Builder’s Club to watch over young Katie Johnson as she battled cancer.  Today it reminds us of the power that stories have to forge connections between people.
 
 
 
 
                                                                              –John